Twitter De-Verifies Milo Yiannopoulos, Fans Respond With #JeSuisMilo

Yiannopoulos finally managed to hack off Twitter enough that they de-verified his account. And, in doing so, they likely made him even more popular.

Love him or hate himand we suspect most likely go for the latterbut Milo Yiannopoulos certainly spends a lot of time on Twitter. And, until today, he had an official, verified account with the social network. The few extra "powers" that grants one over a normal account aren't that big of a deal: filters for notifications, account analytics, and the ability to opt out of group direct messages. The real importance is that it allows a person to confirm that a Twitter handle is officially theirs, as opposed to any other spoof accounts (or hundreds of spoof accounts) that others have made.

Twitter has neglected to provide a reason for why it pulled Yiannopoulos' verified status, commenting that it doesn't share details about specific accounts. In the message the company sent Yiannopoulos, Twitter said that his verification was being pulled as a result of "recent violations of the Twitter Rules." It didn't specify which rules, nor did it say how many violations there were (nor how severe they might have been).

However, a Twitter executive indicated to Buzzfeed that a tweet Yiannopoulos made in which he told another person that she "deserved to be harassed you social justice loser" might have been the tipping point.

"Twitter refuses to tell me or anyone else why they took my verified badge away. They told Buzzfeed it was not down to the little stunt I did over Christmas, when I called myself 'Social Justice Editor at Buzzfeed,' but instead for something I said. But they won't tell me what it was. Twitter suspends users all the time but when they do it to someone well-known, it is always a political conservative," reads a statement from Yiannopoulos, as reported by Recode.

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"The 140,000 people who follow me  and, frankly, the rest of Twitter's users too  deserve an explanation. If Twitter has decided to make partisan political editorial decisions, that's their prerogative. But they must be honest with the public about it. Otherwise they risk damaging their key users' reputations with 'unverifications' and suspensions that give the false impression of harassment, abuse or some other kind of bad behaviour, of which of course I am not guilty."

As for that little December incident Yiannopoulos refers to, that's believed to be the reason why Twitter went so far as to briefly suspend his entire account. The ban lasted barely any time at all, however, which makes the entire point of the suspension seem rather moot.

Since his de-verification, Yiannopoulos' fans have launched the #JeSuisMilo hashtag in his support, and even managed to make it to the third-highest worldwide trending topic.

David Murphy got his first real taste of technology journalism when he arrived at PC Magazine as an intern in 2005. A three-month gig turned to six months, six months turned to occasional freelance assignments, and he has since rejoined his tech-loving, mostly New York-based friends as one of PCMag.com's news contributors.
His rise to (self-described) fame in the world of tech journalism began during his stint as an associate editor at Maximum PC, where his love of cardboard-based PC construction and meetings put him in...
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